Chess is a game, played by two players. One player plays with the white pieces, and the other player plays with the black pieces. Each player has sixteen pieces in the beginning of the game: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns.

The game is played on a chessboard, consisting of 64 squares: eight rows and eight columns. The squares are alternately light (white) and dark colored. The board must be laid down such that there is a black square in the lower-left corner. To facilitate notation of moves, all squares are given a name. From the view of the white player, the rows are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; the lowest row has number 1, and the upper row has number 8. The columns are named, from left to right, a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h. Alternately, the players make a move, starting with the white player (the player that plays with the white pieces.) A move consists of moving one of the pieces of the player to a different square, following the rules of movement for that piece - there is one special exception, named castling, where players move two pieces simultaneously.

A player can take a piece of the opponent by moving one of his own pieces to the square that contains a piece of the opponent. The opponents piece then is removed from the board, and out of play for the rest of the game.
The queen has the combined moves of the rook and the bishop, i.e., the queen may move in any straight line, horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.

The "bishop" moves in a straight diagonal line. The bishop may also not jump over other pieces.
The knight makes a move that consists of first one step in a horizontal or vertical direction, and then one step diagonally in an outward direction.
The pawn moves differently regarding whether it moves to an empty square or whether it takes a piece of the opponent. When a pawn does not take, it moves one square straight forward. When this pawn has not moved at all, i.e., the pawn is still at the second row (from the owning players view), the pawn may make a double step straight forward.
The king moves one square in any direction, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. There is one special type of move, made by a king and rook simultaneously, called castling: see below.

The king is the most important piece of the game, and moves must be made in such a way that the king is never in check. i.e., if black doesn't do anything about it, the rook could take the black king in the next move: we say that the white rook gives check. It is considered good manners to say check when one checks ones opponent.

When a player cannot make any legal move. In a case of a stalemate, the game is a draw.